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children while the later discuses the Speech Acts in inter-language pragmatics.
From those two studies, the first one at glance seems similar to this research. However, actually it is different from this research in the way of
analyzing the data. The first study does not deeply discuss on how the form of children’s performance on responding and producing DSA. It just
categorizes the children’s ability, in every level of age, in responding and producing DSA. While in this study, the linguistic forms of direct and
indirect are also described and analyzed in detail.
B. Literature Study
As mentioned in the first chapter, certain theories are used as framework to analyze the children’s ability in performing DSA. In this section, the
discussion presents several subjects which are set as framework of this research. The topics which are discussed in this part are Children’s Language
Development, Children’s Pragmatic Competence, Children’s Language Competence and Performance, Speech Acts Theory, Directive Speech Act,
Direct-indirect Speech Acts and The Concept of Preferred-dispreferred speech acts in Responding DSA.
1. Children’s Language Development
In study of a child development, language is one aspect which can be used to see the cognition of a child. Although since six weeks a child has
already produced language as cooing then babbling, the first meaningful
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word as an utterance actually occurs around 1,5 years old Dardjowidjojo 2003:244-258. They can produce various speeches to
express their intention. While Steinberg 1982: 147-157 defines the stages as vocalization babbling to speech, naming and holophrastic,
telegraphic, and morphemic-transformational. Foss and Hakes 1978:264 mention that in producing utterances,
children involve three kinds of changes, they are: a. increasing in numbers, variety, and complexity of semantic concepts
expressed in utterance; b. increasing in children’s knowledge of syntactic structures and rules
involved in producing utterance; and c. increasing in the capacity for performing the production processing
required for producing complete well-formed utterance. While producing utterance, a child also needs environmental
input as the way to comprehend an utterance. In term of acquiring a language, the communication context is also an area which a child needs
to understand. The studies so far mostly focus on the growth of formal system,
the product of learning process, and so forth. Elliot 1981:149 has a notion that observing the way language used by a child and by other
people with him in direct communication is also important because children soon will interact with various kinds of people in society.
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2. Children’s Language Competence and Performance
Language competence is one’s underlying knowledge of system of language-its rules of grammar, its vocabulary, all the pieces of language
and how those pieces fit together Brown 2000:31. One’s “real” language competence cannot be seen from an observation. Observation only can
give the surface of one’s competence on language. Although certain sets of methodologies are already used to investigate one’s language
competence, there is no guarantee that the result is going to be the ‘real competence’ of the person. It means that there will be hidden area which
cannot be observed although a set of elicitation technique has been used. However, related to language competence, Language performance
is the actual form of using a language. Performance is overtly observable and concrete manifestation or realization of competence Brown 2000:30.
In a school for instance, some elicitations like test or examination are needed to measure one’s language competence in certain area as targeted
before. Measuring children’s language competence is even more
challenging. Although certain areas of a language are already set to be measured, frequently a researcher finds something surprising. The
following example may give perspective on how difficult to elicit a child to speak; in this case a researcher hopes her respondent will produce a
directive speech act a request.
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Context : a Researcher R offered Arya 3.1, a sweet. R
: Arya mau ini? Bilang gimana kalo mau ini? Arya, wants this? What do you say if you want this?
Arya : Kemarin aku beli kayak gitu. Yesterday I bought something like that.
R : bilangnya gimana dulu, to?
How can you say it, first? Arya : went over her Mom
From the example, the researcher cannot say that Arya is not competent on producing directive speech act. It is because of the
complexity of children’s condition or mood during the interview time. Different from the language competence, children’s language performance
is easier to be observed because the researcher can just observes what the real situation is. Moreover, children’s language performance is also
become concrete manifestation of their language competence.
3. Children’s Pragmatic Competence
